


Where She Leads

by thedevilchicken



Category: Rome (TV 2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Developing Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Fix-It, Injury Recovery, M/M, Post-Canon, Teasing, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 11:30:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11850660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Niobe doesn't have to say a single word to make him follow.





	Where She Leads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss_M](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/gifts).



When she leaves the room, Niobe doesn't have to say a single word to make him follow. The look on her face does that for her.

Years have passed since the first time and Pullo hasn't stopped glancing at him for his permission before he lets himself continue. Vorenus raises his brows - that's his permission soundly given - and then watches him go; Pullo launches himself from the couch with a grin on his face contagious enough that even Lucius Vorenus must crack a smile in reply. Pullo chases Niobe to the villa's mosaicked impluvium that's filling dangerously high from the unexpected summer downpour and he sweeps her off her feet. She shrieks and laughs out loud and kicks her feet; she wraps her long arms around Pullo's tanned neck and Vorenus remembers a time when she would have been appalled by all of this, before they left Rome and even after, for a time. The countryside has been good for her, he thinks.

The countryside has been good for all of them. It's where they spend the majority of their time these days, even if that's not the fashionable thing to do, but that fact is that Niobe had a taste of fashion back in Rome and didn't like it. Vorenus can't say he misses putting on the toga, either, now that he only needs to wear one very rarely, or that he misses the senate, or the Aventine. The farm suits him better. He can run it with near the same precision as a legion and that way he mourns his military career a fraction less now that it's truly finished, even if the estate isn't technically his by law.

Octavian - _Augustus_ \- gave the farm to Pullo, though Niobe says he must have known what he would do with it, and now and then Vorenus might even agree. The first thing Pullo said was that Vorenus could have half of it and he remembers arguing the point, how Pullo shouldn't just give away the things he owned, and Pullo said, _you and the kids and Niobe's all I've got, if I can't count the emperor_. Vorenus laughed. Pullo probably could count the emperor, he thinks, even now. Vorenus has learned to keep his thoughts on empire to himself, but Pullo and Niobe both know the republic's in his heart almost as much as they are.

They moved to the country. They said it would be a fresh start for them and so it was; Pullo had no idea how a farm was run and besides that had no head for figures, so Vorenus learned the trade himself and Pullo mucked in with the heavy work, which seemed to satisfy him more than pages of accounts could ever. They owned vineyards and orchards and fields filled with crops, so much that they would never want for anything, and a villa sat aside from it that they moved into with the children, two days' ride south from Rome along the via Appia. 

Niobe kept the house in a state almost as orderly as Vorenus kept their lands, and the three of them grew closer as the seasons passed. Niobe said she couldn't find Pullo so distasteful as she had before now that he'd given them so much and asked nothing for it, though she complained his eating habits were still only slightly better than the dogs' and made him bathe so often he said he'd started to think it might wash his tan straight off his skin. They weren't friends, perhaps, but they were friendly enough, and Pullo was the only man alive Vorenus trusted with his wife. When he travelled, he was surprised he found no jealousy in leaving them alone.

When the three of them grew _closer_ , they'd been living in the villa for a time quite close to three years. Pullo was injured in the harvest - a deep gouge in his thigh and a broken arm that he'd taken rather than let a hired worker from the village go down in his place, the self-sacrificing idiot - and Niobe took his care very seriously, and personally, though Pullo tried to say a bit of help from one of the household slaves was all he needed. Niobe, however, was as stubborn then as she still is now. She changed his bandages daily. She tended his wounds and she brought his food and she sat with him during the daytime, in between her usual tasks and sometimes instead of them. Then she and Vorenus sat with him in the lamplight after dark, and talked.

A little time went by and Vorenus would return to the villa for his evening meal to the sound of Niobe's laughter, or he would find the two of them deep in teasing conversation. He liked to see Niobe smile and she seemed happier then than she'd been since the boys had gone away for proper Roman schooling. With the younger Vorena married to a good boy from a good family from a nearby town and the elder a priestess back in Rome, the villa had sometimes seemed very close to empty. The sound of their laughter and their voices buoyed Vorenus' spirits up.

The afternoon that it began, he came back from the town with coin from his wine sales and a brooch for Niobe, earlier than anticipated and so he took off his cloak and strode into the villa without even washing his feet. He could hear their voices and so he headed into Pullo's room; there they were, Pullo lying on his bed and Niobe washing him as she'd taken to despite Pullo's awkward blushing protests, a cloth in her hand and a bowl resting on the chair nearby. Vorenus lingered in the doorway, watching. And when Niobe swayed away to wet the cloth again, he could see Pullo was entirely naked; he could see Pullo's cock was hard, and he couldn't look away.

He knew he should have looked away, or said something, coughed, announced himself, and he should likely have been angry or at least suspicious of the situation. He did not, and he was not. He listened as Niobe teased Pullo about his state and Pullo groaned, half amused by it and half embarrassed, as he covered his eyes with the hand of his good arm. She flicked water at his face from her fingertips and he laughed out loud while she went back to work, scrubbing down one calf with the cloth till the hairs on his leg were in complete disarray, her free hand gripping his ankle and the ends of her loose hair sticking to his damp skin. 

Vorenus had never seen the two of them so at ease together before that. And every time Niobe stretched out toward the water bowl, Vorenus almost thought she might be reaching instead for Pullo's cock. He could imagine how that would look, her long fingers wrapping tight around Pullo's thick shaft. He could imagine her stroking him as they continued to talk, and how Pullo's voice would tighten in the same way that his muscles would. He didn't feel jealous. He could have understood jealousy but what he felt was closer to excitement. It was closer to arousal. He felt his cheeks flush hot with shame. 

He took a sharp breath and the two of them looked at him and he absolutely couldn't stand it. He turned and he walked out of the room. Niobe followed; Pullo likely would have, had his injured leg permitted him to walk unaided.

"I wasn't going to touch him," Niobe said, taking his arm to stop him once she'd caught him. Vorenus looked at her and frowned and shifted, and he opened his mouth to tell her that he knew that, that he understood how men's bodies might react because his own might well do the same under similar circumstances, except he couldn't say a word. She eyed him. She moved closer.

"You wanted me to," she said, after a moment, and she sounded more incredulous than she did accusing though he would have understood had that been the other way around. "You _wanted_ me to touch him. Did you want to watch?"

"I..." Vorenus said, but he had no idea in his head what he was supposed to say to follow that. He'd never been the sort of man to lie in order to save face, but the truth was better fitted to Mark Antony than to Lucius Vorenus. He hung his head. Niobe stepped closer and she ran one hand over his short-cropped hair. She eased his forehead down to rest against her own. He closed his eyes. She cupped his cheeks.

"Come to Pullo's room in the morning," she said, her voice low but her tone firm. Then she kissed him quickly and she walked away to see to the remainder of her afternoon tasks - but she glanced back over her shoulder as she went. She smiled. Perhaps Vorenus should have felt humiliated, but he felt something else instead.

In the morning, he went to Pullo's room though every scrap of honor and propriety he had in him told him to do otherwise. Niobe was already there, changing the dressing around Pullo's thigh, and Pullo was hard, and embarrassed, and clearly not sure what to say. Vorenus cleared his throat at the door then entered and sat down in a chair just by the doorway. He watched the two of them.

"Morning, Vorenus," Pullo said. "You know, this is _not_ what it looks like." 

"It looks like my wife is bandaging your leg," Vorenus replied.

"Then it's exactly what it looks like," Pullo said, and he frowned. "But I mean, it's not as if I can keep myself off reacting like I do. She's a beautiful woman, your wife. You can't expect a man not to notice. It's a compliment, really. Besides, it's not like anything's going to happen." 

Niobe glanced at Vorenus, just for a second; he nodded just a fraction, and she reached over. She wrapped one hand around Pullo's cock. Pullo's eyes went wide. 

"Vorenus?" he said, sounding very confused about it. "I didn't ask her to do that. I swear to Mars and Jupiter and the whole bloody lot, I never asked her to do anything."

"I know," Vorenus replied. He could feel his face getting hot. He could feel himself wincing just around his eyes. " _I_ asked her to."

"You did?" 

"I did." 

"Oh. Right." 

Niobe spread a little oil onto her hand and then she wrapped her hand around him again. She stroked him and Pullo looked at her and he looked at Vorenus and he closed his eyes and groaned. Vorenus' hands tightened on the chair arms and he watched Niobe stroking Pullo, slowly, _so_ slowly, watched her fingers, the way her thumb circled the head. He could hear Pullo's harsh breath and the creak of the frame of the bed under his weight as he shifted, how he groaned out loud as if he didn't care who else might hear. Of course, it was just the slaves apart from the three of them, and Vorenus supposes in that way Pullo's like the Roman elite: he doesn't care if the slaves hear him fucking.

Vorenus watched him tense and buck his hips and come over Niobe's hand, all over his own stomach. He watched her clean him off with the cloth and fresh water. And when he finally glanced up at Pullo's face, Pullo was looking at him. He didn't stay to find out why. By the time Pullo tried to protest him leaving, he was already gone. He couldn't keep from touching himself for very much longer, but couldn't do it in that room, with them. 

He went back the next morning and the morning after that, watching Niobe work her magic on an incapacitated Pullo who wasn't exactly making an attempt to fight her off - more or less the opposite was true, in fact. Pullo was enthusiastic.

"Take off your tunic," Vorenus said on the fourth morning and Niobe looked at him for a moment as if making up her mind, then she stood and she took off her sandals, then she took off her clothes. She sat herself down on the edge of Pullo's bed and stroked him, and Vorenus watched her do it. She was as beautiful as he'd ever seen her in that moment, but he understood that he was watching what she was doing more than he was watching her. 

"Put your mouth on him," Vorenus said on the fifth morning, once Niobe had taken off her clothes and bared her skin. Her lips twisted in a small smile and she moved to the bed, sat herself down, took Pullo's cock in her hand. She put her mouth on him. She pressed her lips to his thigh just above the line of the bandage, pressed her lips to his hip and then kissed the very tip of his cock. She licked him. She took him into her mouth and she sucked him and Pullo groaned and it didn't last long. She rinsed her mouth with a cup of wine when she was done and laughed good-naturedly at the look on Vorenus' face as she pulled on her tunic afterwards. He left. He had his own predicament to take care of.

"Put him in you," Vorenus said on the sixth morning, once Niobe was naked and stroking him already. She seemed to consider this for a moment, as Pullo's eyes went wide, then she settled carefully astride Pullo's hips. Vorenus watched her do it: he watched her take Pullo's cock in her hand and rub the tip of it between her thighs, against her lips, against the little nub he would have sworn hadn't been there before Pullo told him it was so. He watched her angle her hips and push down and then Pullo's thick cock slipped up inside her. Pullo groaned. Niobe sighed. And then she rode him, slowly, rolling her hips as Pullo lay there, his splinted arm lying uselessly by his side and his good hand clinging tightly to the mattress. Pullo came with a groan and a buck of his hips and Niobe stayed there, his cock still pushed up in her, and she trailed her own fingers down between her thighs. She touched herself, made herself gasp and roll her hips again till she shivered and moaned, and when she was done Vorenus realised he had the heel of one hand pressing down against his cock. He grimaced. He left. 

She rode Pullo again the morning after, and the morning after that. Pullo started to walk again, leaning on a stick though soon enough he no longer needed it and when the physician said it was time to remove the splints from his arm, it seemed almost as good as new again. Pullo had, somehow, blessed or cursed by the gods as he was, always managed to pull through injury without much to show for it; it seemed he'd done it again. 

"Touch her," Vorenus said on the fourteenth morning, once Niobe had pushed Pullo's cock up inside herself. 

"You sure about that?" Pullo asked, and Vorenus nodded stiffly; he _wasn't_ sure, not at first, but then Pullo's big hands skimmed Niobe's thighs, framed her hips, skipped up to cup her breasts, and then he was sure. Pullo turned, dumped her down onto her back and Niobe laughed in delighted surprise as she wrapped her legs around his waist. Pullo fucked her, slow and deep, and Vorenus watched him do it. He watched how Pullo's muscles tensed. He watched how Pullo's shoulders shifted. He watched Pullo's toes press to the end of the bed for leverage as he thrust inside her. He could tell when he was about to come because the rhythm of it stuttered then broke. Pullo groaned as he came in her. Niobe chuckled. 

"Juno's cunt, that was good," Pullo said as he pushed himself up to his knees, still inside her. 

"That's blasphemy, Pullo," Vorenus pointed out, though his gaze was still on the place where Pullo's cock was half the way inside her. He could see her lips stretched around him. 

"Most women have one," Niobe said, sounding amused where before Vorenus would have expected disapproval. "I think even a goddess must, don't you?"

"I doubt they swear by it," he said, sounding more belligerent than he actually felt, and Pullo laughed breathlessly. 

"I don't know, Vorenus," he said. "I think Jupiter might." And he licked his thumb then slipped it down between Niobe's legs and rubbed at her. Her back arched. Her fingers clawed the mattress. 

"Don't you ever want to join in, Lucius?" she asked, gasping, and he didn't answer because he knew he did. 

The fifteenth morning, Pullo had her standing with her legs around his waist and her back against the wall. The sixteenth morning, Pullo had her on her hands and knees with her fingers down between her thighs. The seventeenth morning, Pullo put his mouth between her thighs and licked her till she shivered all over. The eighteenth morning, he put his cock inside her then he rubbed her with his fingers till she fucked herself on the length of him. Vorenus watched till they were done, then went to his tablinum to finish off himself. 

"Kiss her," Vorenus said on the nineteenth morning, while they were still undressing, and Pullo looked at him as if he needed confirmation. He nodded. Niobe nodded. Pullo stepped over to her, still wearing his subligaria if nothing else, and he took her upper arms in his hands, he rested his hands on her shoulders, he ran his hands up to her cheeks. He bowed his head and in the end his mouth found hers. 

She untied his subligaria and let it drop to the floor. He pushed her tunic from her shoulders and let it drop, too. They kissed again, deeper, harder, Pullo's fingers in Niobe's hair and hers clawing the small of his back. He lifted her; she wrapped her legs around his waist; they kissed again and Vorenus watched them, watched as they almost tumbled to the chilly floor tiles as Pullo went down to his knees and Niobe laughed, pleased, excited, as he nudged his cock inside her. They fucked on the floor in front of him, almost at his feet, _right there_ , and Vorenus' breath caught and his cock stiffened and his palm pressed over the front of his tunic. And when Pullo came, Vorenus' gaze strayed up; Pullo was watching him. Pullo's eyes were on him. There was a spike of something in Vorenus' gut so sharp and tight and unexpected that he came inside his clothes from it. Horrified, he got up and fled.

"You know, he's been watching you all the time," Niobe told him later, at night, in their bed in the dark, and Vorenus turned his back and pretended to sleep. She trailed her hand down his arm. "I thought you knew." 

"I didn't know," he muttered. 

"You do now," she said. 

On the twentieth morning, he left early for business, though that seemed like a convenient excuse. They kept a small house in the city, expenses paid by the letting of two front rooms facing a busy street as shops, and that was where he stayed; he'd missed his daughter and her husband by three days, the slaves there told him when he asked, and he'd have liked to see them but then it was hardly the best time; he conducted his business there for four days and each was torturous. He touched himself in the night in the bed that was his and Niobe's and he thought about Titus Pullo's eyes on him. He thought about Titus Pullo's cock in his wife. He thought about Titus Pullo's cock in Niobe's mouth, remembered a night in camp somewhere in Gaul when he'd seen Titus Pullo sucking on another soldier's cock. He hadn't thought about that night in years but he thought about it then. He came thinking about Pullo's mouth on him, not just his eyes.

On the twenty-ninth morning, he returned from Rome. He thought he'd made decisions. He walked into an ambush. 

He should have known something was going on because the villa was too quiet. There were usually slaves bustling here and there, carrying wine or water, cleaning floors, Vorenus' foreman up from the farm to discuss the accounts, but there was none of that as he entered the house. So he went looking. They weren't in Pullo's room. He found them waiting in the room he shared with Niobe, sitting naked on the bed in hushed conversation. 

Pullo stood. Vorenus eyed him. Pullo smiled an awkward, grimacing smile and rubbed at the back of his neck. Vorenus crossed his arms over his chest. Pullo shuffled closer. 

"Look, Vorenus," Pullo said, still stuck halfway between a smile and a grimace. "Me and Niobe have been talking. If you don't want me looking, you just say the word and I'll keep my eyes to myself." 

Vorenus looked him up and down. He jutted his chin. He clenched his jaw. "I want you looking," he said, even though it was hard to say and harder to admit it, and Pullo's awful smile spread out into a grin. 

"Sit down," Vorenus said, and he gestured to a chair across the room, so Pullo sat down. Then Vorenus undressed, feeling a blush spread hot over his face, and Pullo watched him do it. Vorenus went to the bed, to Niobe who was waiting with a smile, and Pullo watched him do that, too. He kissed Niobe and Pullo watched. Niobe pulled him down onto the bed, and Pullo watched him go down with her. When he fumbled himself into place between her thighs, when he pushed inside her, he glanced at Pullo; his hand was wrapped around his cock. He was stroking himself as he watched them.

"Don't," Vorenus told him, firmly if a little strained, and Pullo held his hands up in the air so he'd know he'd done as he was told, then he gripped at the stout wooden arms of the chair. Vorenus rocked his hips and Niobe gripped his biceps and he moved in her, slowly at first but he knew Pullo was watching them so when she said _harder_ , he obliged. 

And when he was almost done, when he was _almost_ there and he could feel it, Vorenus stopped. He pulled back out of her and Niobe smiled and nodded. He stood. 

"Get up," he told Pullo, so Pullo got up. Vorenus stepped up to him. Vorenus looked up at him. Pullo is bigger and he's stronger even now than Vorenus ever was, but he looked at him like Lucius of the Voreni was a full head taller than him. Vorenus paused. 

"My husband wants to be reassured that you want to do more than watch him," Niobe said, lounging, watching from the bed. "Though I think he knows you'd fuck every man and woman from here to Gaul and back if you had the chance." 

"Sons of Dis, woman!" Vorenus said, more at her language than the content of the thing she'd said, but Pullo laughed and Niobe smiled, and then Pullo's hands were around his wrists. Pullo stopped laughing. Pullo looked at him. Perhaps Pullo meant to say something but Vorenus stopped his mouth with his. Vorenus pressed his mouth to Pullo's and he wrapped his hand around Pullo's cock and then Pullo's arm was around his waist and Pullo's hand was at the back of his neck and they were kissing, he was kissing Titus Pullo of all people, and pushing him back against the bedroom wall.

He got his hand around his own cock and rubbed the length of it against Pullo's and Pullo groaned, his hips pushing against him. They looked at each other as Vorenus' hand stroked both of them. When Pullo finished, Vorenus was looking him in the eye. When Vorenus came not very long after, Pullo's rough hands were cradling Vorenus' jaw so that he couldn't look away.

"We missed you, Lucius," Niobe said, as she crossed the room when they were done to lean up naked to Vorenus' back. Pullo smiled at him and nodded like he meant that, too. 

There were tasks to be done and the day was still young so the three of them cleaned themselves and dressed then parted. That evening, they ate together and spoke together and then Niobe left her couch in the triclinium and walked away with a glance over her shoulder. Vorenus stood and he began to follow, but paused there by the door. 

"Are you coming?" he asked. Pullo broke into a grin. When Vorenus left the room, he followed.

The bed wasn't long enough for Pullo to lie down on so they went to Pullo's room instead once they'd undressed and found the problem, walking naked through the villa in the moonlight through the compluvium. They stretched out in the near-dark and Niobe drifted off to sleep while Pullo watched Vorenus, his head propped up on one big hand. 

"You're staring," Vorenus said. 

"So are you," Pullo replied. Vorenus chuckled. He supposed Pullo was right.

It was three more weeks till Vorenus finally oiled his cock and pushed it into Pullo on his hands and knees, who cursed by all the gods for a start and made Niobe snicker though quite soon there were fewer curses than there were groans. It was four more months till Vorenus went down on his back on the bed and Pullo leaned there over him, till Pullo pushed up into him with Vorenus' hands gripping tight at Pullo's arms. He believed he'd hate it but as it happened, he didn't. He thought he might regret it; in fact, he never has. The first time has been far from the only time.

Years have passed and the three of them still live there in the villa. Vorenus thinks they're happy where they are, in their lives that Octavian - _Augustus_ \- provided for them, and at the end of the day whether they sleep together or in separate beds they're not very far apart. Sometimes he wakes in the night to Pullo's snoring and shakes him awake so he can suffer, too. Sometimes he wakes in the morning to the press of Niobe's lips to his and her hands skimming his skin. Sometimes he watches the two of them together and sometimes he's the one that's being watched. Sometimes they both want him. Sometimes he's happy to oblige.

Tonight, Pullo sweeps Niobe off her feet and he carries her as she makes a show of her mock-protest, smiling all the while. He carries her away from their couches and he splashes through the ankle-deep pool in the impluvium, through the rain that's pouring in, and Niobe shrieks and kicks her feet but the two of them can tell she doesn't mind at all. Pullo takes her away toward the bedroom they all share and Vorenus watches them, amused by what he sees. And when Pullo returns Niobe to her feet by the bedroom door, she turns and glances back over her shoulder at him, and then at Vorenus. She smiles. What she wants is in her eyes.

She doesn't have to say a word and never has to. Vorenus leaves the couch and follows; he follows her, and meets them both.


End file.
